Donation box with food and toilet paper on the wooden desk. Covid-19 outbrake, self-isolation.
Picture of By: Mary Sommer

By: Mary Sommer

Decluttering is NOT Organizing

If you head over to the Before and After pages you will see some of my projects.  Regardless of the space this process starts with decluttering: remove trash, sort it and then dump or donate, next rehome the wrongly placed items but it doesn’t stop there.  Some of these space took many hours but that is because some of the time was spent planning where to best place items.  If you simply push everything  back into neat piles you have achieved much less and the likelihood of the space returning to a dump is quite high. 

  1. Take the time to plan out the space, this is a work in progress and you can change and modify space-planning as you progress

2. Design the space to meet your needs not how you think it should look. 

3. DO NOT BUY any storage containers until you are sure of what you need. You may already have plenty of storage containers after you declutter

4. Putting like-things together will help create quick order and also help you decide if you need to eliminate more items

5. Make sure there is adequate space between items.  Whether it is cans of sauce or bins of sporting equipment it is important to leave enough room to remove and return items

6. Storage is about retrieval and replacement.  Things must be easy to retrieve and easy to return or you will go back to the piles and a dumping ground quickly.  Leave enough space to easily access bins and shelves

7. Areas need to be functional not Pinterest perfect.  Don’t let the staged pictures on Pinterest get in your way of completing your task.  Neat and tidy has its own visual beauty whether or not the baskets all match.  Function is always the priority

Contact me if you get stuck.  Organizers have a set of skills and abilities that will make the process easier.  Besides, it is more fun with two people